


well I rose, and I rose

by l_cloudy



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Akielos, Gen, Post-Kings Rising, Recovery, all sort of messy family feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-13 01:37:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13559913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: Theomedes wakes from his long illness to find that one of his sons is dead, the other has become a man, and some cheeky Veretian upstart has taken up residence in his palace. Post Kings Rising AU.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



> Dear Nabielka, happy ChocBox Day! I was enthusiast to be getting such an awesome list of prompts to play with.

For a king of warriors, it was no simple thing to grow old. Theomedes had struggled with it when he first noticed he could no longer run as fast, or sleep as deeply, and his knees and hands began to ache in the winters. But even then he’d rested peacefully, sure of the strength of his legacy. And he was still a King; even if he could no longer march under the sun or wrestle an opponent into submission, he could still lead.

When the wilting came, it was sudden. Just like any common man, infirmity came upon him in a matter of weeks. One day he’d been healthy, walking tall and proud, passing judgement, and taking Hypermenestra to his bed; the next he was just a sick old fool, waiting to die.

Days were hazy, and the nights all blended together. He was always feverish, sweating, cold hands on his forehead. He was given liquids to drink by his slaves and fed broths and honey. There were screams and cries one night, and when young Aden came next his face was pale and drawn. His household wore the black of mourning and the red of death, their hair shorn, and he saw Kastor at his bedside once, shaken by sobs, and he wept, _Father, I am sorry. Father_.

Theomedes wondered, if he was dead, where would he go? But he couldn’t be dead; his chest hurt and he could not keep his eyes open. There were no bells, no candles and no procession, and his body was washed with water instead of oiled for the burial rites. It was dark more often than not, and his sheets were damp. He was cold.

One morning Theomedes opened his eyes, and he was still alive. He felt oddly light, his head still muddled, but stronger than he could remember since he’d first been laid down in his sickbed. He tried to rise and suddenly there were hands on his shoulders, the touch light and comforting.

“ _He’s awoken_ ,” he heard, in halting, accented Akielon. He turned to see a pale man with brown eyes and a strange hat, and saw the door close on the back of a messenger – a palace guard, not a slave. Odd, that.

Two of his slaves were at his bedside, wiping his forehead, helping him rise. Sweet Euthymia put a cup full of water to his lips, making sure not a drop would fall into his beard. His throat was parched.

There was only one other slave in the room, kneeling by the door, and _another_ guard, a man with the notched belt of the north. No courtiers, none of his physician, no Hypermenestra, no –

“Send for my sons,” said Theomedes. To his own ears, his voice sounded old and fragile. “Where are they?”

He spoke to no one in particular, but it was the northern soldier who answered, coming to kneel by the bed so that Theomedes wouldn’t need to strain his neck. He was a king, made too weak to hold his own head above a cushion.

“Exalted,” said the man. “Your man went to fetch the Kyros. He’ll tell you everything.”

Which kyros, he wanted to ask, but he never needed to because the door opened again to admit the same guard along with Nikandros of Delpha, who Theomedes had last seen in Ios for Damianos’s twenty-fifth celebration months ago. Nikandros stared, wide-eyed, and came to kneel in the same spot as the northman had, not out of convenience but out respect.

“ _Exalted_.” Nikandros’s breath was heavy. He must have run there, and fast.

“I am glad you are awake,” he said, his tone formal. Then he stood up, without waiting for permission, and there was a sense of urgency about him as he looked around the room.

“Clear the room while I speak with Theomedes-exalted,” said Nikandros, as if he expected to be obeyed immediately, as if he weren’t giving orders to the king’s slaves in the king’s own bedroom with the king himself two feet from him.

He was obeyed; his slaves stood and left through the door, and so did the palace guard, and the northman – one of Nikandros’s own men, when it came down to it. Only the pale man remained until Nikandros turned to him and asked again to leave, and it took Theomedes some moments to realize he had spoken in Veretian. The man left, door closing behind him, and then they were truly alone, the king and his kyros and his sons nowhere to be seen.

“What is happening, kyros?” Theomedes asked the instant they were alone. Weak he might be, but he deserved an answer. “Why is a _Veretian_ in my apartments?”

“Exalted,” Nikandros began. “So much happened. You were poisoned. You–”

Poisoned. In Ios, in his own home.

“You were sick for months, we thought you wouldn’t recover. One of your physicians must have done it, but we don’t know who yet, the Veretian…” he paused, and made an odd face before resuming. “The Veretian man came with me from the border, a physician, and he saved you.”

“He can be trusted,” Nikandros went on, for as much as the words clearly unsettled him. “He – Damianos trusts him.”

Damianos was good at picking his people, Theomedes thought then. Damianos was – Not there…

“Where are my sons?”

“They – Exalted, there was unrest. Fighting in the palace. Damianos… he was stabbed, he is recovering and cannot leave his bed.”

The kyros, Damianos’s friend, was looking pained as he spoke, not meeting his eyes. “Damianos will recover,” he said. And then. “Kastor is dead.”

It was as though the whole world had shifted. _Kastor is dead_ , Nikandros said, and certainly his kyros would have no reason to lie. _Kastor is dead_ and so Kastor must be; his son, with his imperious moods and his passion for archery. Kastor, the son of the woman he loved, whom he’d held in his arms as a babe. Kastor was – he had been closer to middle age than to infancy, but he couldn’t help but picture him as the child he had been, loud and fearless. Kastor was dead.

“When?”

“Two days ago, Exalted. His body was prepared but – Damianos wished to wait until he was recovered for the funeral.”

He found himself nodding, agreeing with the words. At least he’d woken up in time, at least he could be there for the last time.

He became tired quickly, after, and Nikandros did not say much more before he called his slaves back in, and the guards. Guards did not belong on the inside of royal apartments, but if he had been poisoned… The Veretian walked in too, taking Theomedes’s hand to touch his pulse and bending to his chest to listen to the heartbeat. He made him drink something from a small pot, ignoring the three slaves whose job was to assist their king. He fussed over him until Theomedes felt the world go soft and grey all around him.

He slept.

His son was dead.

He woke up too weak to speak, barely strong enough to move. Two, three times. The Veretian physician was always there, always with two guards: one always a man from Ios, the other a soldier from the border. Once he woke up to see a young man perched on a chair in a corner, a youth with golden hair and a truly lovely face who was staring at him intently as if trying to solve some important mystery. Another time he woke up with an ache deep down in his chest, and he realized what the rotation of northern soldiers was in his room for when the Veretian began asking him questions in his own language, the soldier on duty translating his question and reporting Theomedes’s answers.

When he woke up next he felt truly on the way to healing; he was able to sit down by himself and chew the grapes Graia brought to his lips. The physician was not there, and the guards inside the room explained he’d gone to attend to Damianos’s wound and change his bandages and would come as soon as possible. If Exalted so wished, he was told, they could send for kyros Nikandros again, and Theomedes wondered why it was Nikandros of Delpha, who should be in Marlas, giving orders and making assignments in his palace, and not Xenthius of Ios who should assume command when both the King and his sons – his _son_ – were indisposed.

Perhaps, one guard wondered out loud to the other, they should go inform the Prince. That made Theomedes look up sharply, which in turn made everything around him sway.

“I thought Damianos was being attended by the physician,” he said, and for some reason that made both his guards wince and look at each other in a way that made it clear to Theomedes that there was much he didn’t know.

“Send for Nikandros, then,” he ordered. “And Hypermenestra.”

That made the men wince yet again, and the palace guard, a man Theomedes remembered had been handpicked by Damianos, informed him that Hypermenestra was undisposed, as well, which in turn reminded Theomedes that he had a son to bury, just as he’d buried his wife and all the small heirs that had never been.

“Send for Nikandros,” he repeated, then sat up better to wait.

When Nikandros arrived, Theomedes finally got a good look at him that wasn’t clouded by the haze of poison and whatever concoction passed for medicine in Vere. He saw that Nikandros was tired and nervous, and his chiton was wrinkled.

“There’s much you need to tell me,” said Theomedes, and his guards and his slaves left as if they’d all been waiting for this moment.

“Exalted,” said Nikandros. “I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this.” And then he raised his head and looked his king in the eye.

“Kastor was the one who poisoned you,” he said. “And he tried to have Damianos killed.”

If Theomedes had hurt hearing about his son’s death, this was a pain beyond belief. Like a weight crushing a limb that was already broken; one moment his firstborn son was dead, the next he was a dead traitor, the most despicable of criminals. His son, whom he’d carried on his shoulders once.

“Go on,” he told Nikandros, because he was a king and he would not shy away from the truth.

“There was a plot,” said Nikandros. “Some of your household were involved, and some of Damianos’s. And the Ambassador from Vere, Guion. The Regent of Vere – the Regent talked Kastor into treason and gave him men and support. He – made it look as though Damianos’s guards had him killed, and executed all of them. Nobody outside of the palace knew what was happening.”

Nikandros’s voice was hesitant and monotone, every sentence pained. Every sentence hurt more: poison, some kind of treasonous plot with Vere, Damianos’s guard. This spoke of planning, of months and years in the making. This was his son, and Theomedes hadn’t seen any of it.

“Damianos… Kastor didn’t have him killed at first, although he could have. There was an accord with the Regent. Damianos was sent to Vere,” and here the voice got very low, words Theomedes could barely make out. “As a slave.”

“ _What_ ,” he said, then stopped. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t have means to put together those words and find a meaning. Free men were not made into slaves, especially not princes. Especially not Damianos, who was the best warrior of his age and kneeled for no one. Slaves were meek creatures, soft and perfumed and eager to serve. Eager to be fucked. Damianos could not. He wouldn’t.

“Exalted,” said Nikandros. “We… there was a larger plot from the Regent. The man planned to dispatch Kastor, dispatch his nephew, and rule two kingdoms. He had Damianos sent to his nephew – the brother of Prince Auguste. He probably hoped they would kill each other.”

It was too much; the ache of Kastor’s death and that of his treason, the stain on Akielos of Kastor’s actions, that of Damianos’s fate. In the midst of it all, he found a vein of hope in Nikandros’s words, and he grabbed it.

“You speak of this man in the past. The Regent of Vere. Is he dead?”

Nikandros hesitated. “He is. He was charged with treason by his own Council, in Akielos during the campaign, and he was executed.”

The news did not dampen his pain in the least, but Theomedes decided he could find pleasure in it nevertheless.

“Tell me about my son. Damianos. What – what happened?”

Nikandros drew in a breath. “You’ll have to ask him this. But… I know he was brought to Arles, and he learned about the plot. He – entered an alliance with the Prince of Vere, and we fought together on the border then rode to Akielos. We took back the palace but he was stabbed, when Kastor died.”

“Kastor was the one who stabbed him.”

It was not a question, but Nikandros nodded.

“This was only days ago,” he went on. “We don’t know yet who in Ios was part of the plot, who was coerced and who obeyed out of ignorance.”

“What about Hypermenestra?”

He received a look filled with far too much compassion to come from a kyros to his king. “Lady Hypermenestra is confined to her quarters but has been allowed to care for her son’s body. We – we don’t believe she knew about the plot, at least not at first. She cared for you during your illness, until last week.”

He couldn’t bear to think about Kastor anymore. “How many Veretians are in my city, kyros?”

“Not many,” began Nikandros. “In the city. But there are troops camped outside, waiting to leave. The Veretian Council is here, and some of their nobles. Some guards are in the palace also, and the physician who detected your poisoning. And the Prince.”

“The Prince of Vere,” said Theomedes. “The one who received my son as a slave?”

He’d said this matter-of-factly, but Nikandros winced nonetheless. As well as he should; he was Damianos’s good friend as well as his subject, and the entire of Akielos had been given offence by the enslavement of their Crown Prince. Theomedes would seek retribution, if not on the Regent then on his family.

“Exalted,” said Nikandros. “If I may. The Prince of Vere and Damianos were allies these past few months. They fought together. He was the one who succoured Damianos when he was stabbed and offered us the help of his physician when it became clear you had been poisoned. I believe your son thinks of him – as a friend.”

Had it come from anybody else, Nikandros’s little speech would have been nothing short of preposterous. But this was Damen’s friend, who knew him well; and a steadfast, reliable kyros and leader of men.

“And what do you think?”

Nikandros, plainly, did not relish the idea of having to cast a judgement on Damianos’s decisions. He hesitated, and Theomedes wondered: with one son plotting a coup, another fighting for his birthright and himself dying in his sickbed, how much of the authority of kingship had Damianos taken onto himself in the past months? Was the loyalty of Damianos’s supporters split between their King and their Prince? Would Damianos demand more power for himself, from now on, and would Theomedes allow it?

The thoughts went through his mind, quick as lighting, in the few moments it took Nikandros to answer. He spoke slowly, keeping himself ramrod straight.

“I think, Exalted,” said Nikandros. “That your son has found himself a reliable ally. And that I will rest more easily when he’s gone.”

Theomedes nodded. This was good news, as good as he could have hoped for considering the situation; and he felt relieved in the knowledge that his palace wasn’t about to be overrun by duplicitous Veretian troops. He felt more relieved still by Nikandros’s sensible caution. Optimism was all well and good in the wake of victory, but too much trust would kill them all. It was a lesson Damianos had never quite learned. Kastor, it seemed, had learned it too well.

Later that day he was well enough to sit up straight on a wooden chair as Aden attended to him, cleaning his body with a scented cloth. The linens were stripped from his bed and replaced with new ones, bright white and clean, and the Veretian physician spent an inane amount of time making Theomedes grasp his hand to gauge his strength or similar idiocies. The physician had thin, greying hair and keen eyes, and Theomedes was cognizant enough now that he was able to make sense of all those lilting Veretian vowels.

He asked after Damen’s health and learned that the stab wound had missed the bowels and any vital organs, but caused a great deal of blood loss. The wound had been hastily sewn closed with a linen thread, as it was done in Akielos, then opened and closed again following Veretian precepts, with strands made from animal tendons of all things. The wound had been made with a dirty blade and infection was the main concern, but Prince Damianos was strong and healthy, and he would recover. The physician’s face brightened as he said that, with all the satisfaction of a man who was sure he would not be blamed for the death of foreign royalty and would be compensated handsomely for his efforts. The wound would leave a scar, but would not impair movement. It was always _the wound_ , as if Theomedes could forget it had been Kastor who’d inflicted it. Kastor had wounded Damianos once before, when he had been a boy of thirteen. At the time, Theomedes had thought it a horrible mishap. Kastor had cried. Now, he wondered.

How had Damen been able to overpower his brother, after being stabbed in such a treacherous way? The physician did not answer; but then again, he would hardly know. What about Theomedes’s own health, would he recover? He was neither young nor strong, but he was King, and he had come to suspect that whichever of his own physicians hadn’t been poisoning him would have been too intimidated by the threat of royal wrath to say anything but that he would recover soon. The Veretian physician, conscious of his success with Damianos and the favour of his own sovereign behind him, said none of that.

The physician told Theomedes that he’d been poisoned with some kind of Veretian substance extracted from mushrooms, that would compromise his lungs and paralyse his breathing. In addition, there had been drugs to keep him weak and unconscious. The poison was administered regularly, with small doses incremented over months, very slowly. Too slowly, according to the physician, who suspected Theomedes’s body had grown some sort of immunity over time. He appeared impressed at Theomedes’s strength; being Veretian, he also had to remark on the failure of the poisoning attempt. Something so sloppy would never happen in Vere, he was told, which was why there were no known cases of inurement to this particular toxin, and there was no telling yet if Theomedes would develop complications as a consequence of the withdrawal.

He thanked the physician and sent him on his way. He slept and he woke up. He was brought breakfast and began eating by himself, but halfway through his arm started shaking and he had to require assistance. He was washed again, and this time he gave orders to his slaves to shave him, out of practical concerns. He was shown his face in a mirror, after, and he had to suppress a wince at how pale and old he looked, his eyes sunken and skin far too waxy. It was a good shave, and when he said so Aden beamed in satisfaction.

Once he was dressed in something more suitable, he sent for Nikandros again. The palace guard on duty went running, which left him with the other guard, another man of the north.

“Soldier,” he said, and the man came to kneel next to Theomedes’s cushioned chair. It was not quite the throne of his ancestors, but it was still better than the damn sick bed.

“Exalted?”

“Is your General in Ios, also? Makedon?”

The soldier nodded, keeping his eyes downcast. “Yes, Exalted.”

“Who’s left in the north? Straton? Meniados?”

“Nobody in Delpha, Exalted.” The soldier paused. Considering. “Meniados – sided with Kastor, Exalted.”

That some of his kyroi must have been part of the plot was a thought Theomedes really ought to have entertained before now, unpleasant as it was. That explained what Nikandros was doing walking around giving orders in Ios.

“Xenthius, too?” he asked, and the soldier nodded. “Who else?”

By the time Nikandros arrived, his hair still damp from the baths, Theomedes had learned about the South rallying around Kastor and the Northern host marching on the capital, gathering men across the way. The army had been weeks away when Ios had been retaken, and Makedon had sent off his men to each of the southern provinces, calming the unrest. The borders were defenceless - under any other circumstances, ripe for invasion. As things stood, however, they’d already been all but invaded.

“How many Veretian troops are outside the city?” he asked Nikandros as soon as he arrived, hair still wet from the baths.

Nikandros’s face darkened. “Three thousand.” The standing army quartered in Ios counted roughly two thousand, but most of them would have been dispatched somewhere else. The city guard and the palace guard would add another five hundred men between them, but there was no telling how many had sided with Kastor and how many must have died in the fighting. They were, in their own capital, dangerously outnumbered.

Theomedes opened his mouth to ask how the hell had Vere managed to bring three thousand soldiers within spitting distance of the royal palace, but he stopped. He knew the answer – Kastor, that idiot, idiot _boy_ , who had almost killed them all, and who he’d have seen executed had he lived. His son, whose actions, he assumed, said something about his own as a father.

“I want to see – I want to see Damen,” he said, and his voice, to his ears, sounded as old as he felt.

“I can arrange that,” said Nikandros. “Maybe–”

“Now,” he said. “Arrange it. Call for whoever you like. I’m going to see my son.”

Nikandros made obeisance and went to the door, telling the men on duty to clear the corridors. It wouldn’t do, of course, to have any passing kitchen hand or recruit see that the King needed assistance to walk around his own palace in the aftermath of a coup. He sent forth two slaves and called for more soldiers. Most of them had the paler skin and the notched belts of the men of the north, another stark reminder that Nikandros did not trust the men of Ios with the life of their King. Along with the northmen came the Veretian, whose concerned face was enough to make Theomedes want to shut him up even before he opened his mouth.

“Majesty,” said the physician, a frilly title for a frilly language. “You haven’t walked in months. Your legs won’t be able to support your weight. You haven’t even begun any sort of exercise regime yet–”

Veretians, it appeared, were far too free with their tongues around royalty. Some of Nikandros’s men understood Veretian and had clenched fists and clenched jaws. Nikandros himself looked thunderous, and oddly resigned. He ordered the physician to get to the point; the point being, apparently, that Theomedes should acquiesce to be bodily carried like some sickly lady. The physician explained that the Veretian nobles inhabiting a whole wing of the Palace would have plenty of litters on hands, but stopped short of suggesting one Theomedes use one. Instead, he merely narrowed his eyes in disapproval as Theomedes left his rooms in precisely the way he’d meant to, on his own feet, two of Nikandros’s strongest men supporting all of his weight. It was still more tiring than he’d expected; halfway to Damianos’s apartments he was damp with sweat and short of breath.

When they turned on the corridor that housed Damianos’s rooms, Theomedes frowned. There were plenty of guards, all of them with notched belts, but there were Veretian soldiers as well, two men wearing the blue of the royal house, standing at the mouth of the corridor. They moved aside to let them pass, a shallow bow the only acknowledgement. He heard Nikandros mutter something under his breath and saw him frown.

“Those are the Prince’s men, Exalted,” he said. “As far as I can tell, he had them posted out here to be an annoyance. But they are – reliable.”

 _For Veretians_ , it went unsaid.

The slaves he sent ahead had brought a chair, heavy oak and cushioned, and Theomedes watched as the door to Damianos’s antechamber was opened, as the slaves walked inside and the soldiers waited at the entrance on his convenience.

“When I am done I will see you in my rooms, along with Makedon and the commanders of the men in Ios.” For the coup to succeed, Theomedes knew, most of the officers in the capital must have either been traitors, or fool enough to let themselves be deceived. He was not looking forward to telling the guilty from the blind.

He walked in.

Damianos’s rooms, when he was helped inside, were deserted. There were no attendants, or the sweet sooting notes of a kithara. There was Theomedes’s chair, nothing like his marble throne, placed in the middle of the bedchamber. There was a low couch covered in wrinkled silks by the bed, and a small, high table painted in shiny polish, with atop a water pitcher, a goblet, and fresh square cloths. There was the bed itself, placed under the window so that the outside light would stream across the mattress, bathing the room in gold. And on the bed there was his son, his abdomen covered in bandages, stark white against the skin. Damianos’s hair was cut oddly, his eyes deep-set and bruised, face tinged a sickly grey. And he was smiling, wide and blindingly.

“Father,” said Damen.

Theomedes, too, found himself smiling.

“Son,” he said. “I am – glad to see you.” It was not kingly, how his voice almost broke, but there was no one around to witness it.

“And you, Father. I was afraid I wouldn’t return in time to…” Damianos’s voice trailed off, but they both understood.

“Father,” his son asked then. “Could you please dismiss your slaves? So we could talk alone.”

Theomedes’s brow raised in surprise. They were alone, in all the ways that mattered: his slaves would not sooner report on their conversation than they would disobey a direct order. Perhaps it was a sign of how deeply troubled Damianos was by his brother’s treason, that he would doubt the intentions of the King’s own slaves. _Or_ , Theomedes thought, and he froze.

He remembered Nikandros’s words, his shocking story. Perhaps Damianos’s doubts were born of new insights, acquired along with a humiliation no free man should have to suffer. Or perhaps he did not want the obedient creatures at his father’s side to hear the tale of how their future king had been forced into the same collars they wore.

Dismissing his slaves with a gesture, Theomedes looked at his son in renewed scrutiny. Damianos lay half under the thin sheet, and the skin of his abdomen was reddened above the bandage; it had not been a clean blade. His face and neck were covered in sheen, and he wore a what appeared to be a Veretian garment to absorb the sweat and keep him fresh, a white shirt with long sleeves and elaborate laces, although unfastened like those men wore to sleep in colder climates. Besides the obvious wound he appeared otherwise unharmed; his face was just as open as Theomedes remembered, his dark eyes sparkling with the usual confidence.

His son didn’t look _broken_ , Theomedes decided; and he felt something knotted inside him give way.

“They told you about Kastor.”

It was not a question. He nodded.

“Father, I am – I swear, I don’t know what I could have done to–” Damianos stopped, suddenly, then shook his head once, as if to clear it. He was hunched over where he sat, trying to lean forward through the distance.

“I was blind, I didn’t see any of it. Nikandros told me, and I refused to listen. I… was – It was unbecoming of a future king. I didn’t…” He was speaking as though the words were coming from someplace deep inside him, as though now that he’d begun, he could not stop. “I know now that I was dismissive, and self-absorbed, and I can see now things I could have done, words I could have said. But I didn’t, then, and Kastor–”

“Your brother made his own choices.”

The words, when they came out, where not harsh. In truth, as horrific as the situation was, it pleased Theomedes to hear Damianos say he should trust less and observe more. It was a lesson every king needed to learn. But the price had been far too high, and no amount of inattentiveness could have excused Kastor’s actions. Besides, if anyone should take the blame for stoking the flame of Kastor’s resentment it should be Theomedes himself, who had been far too quick to take his firstborn’s steadfast presence for granted. A kind word at the right moment, a show of support when it had been needed. But he had forgotten and Kastor, apparently, never had.

“He made his own choices,” said Theomedes, again. “You shouldn’t – Don’t think it was your fault.”

“I should have.”

“You _shouldn’t_. Don’t do this to yourself,” said Theomedes. “I have only one son now.”

Damianos, slowly, nodded. Theomedes looked at him. He seemed – more mature, wiser. For all that he had been a man grown for years now, there had always been something boyish about Damianos, who’d been born blessed with all the gifts of the gods and was beloved and admired, eager and careless. Now there was a new air about him, something in his face, a new awareness in his eyes. Less impetus, more wisdom. He looked every inch the man Theomedes had always hoped his heir would grow into, the man he’d always know Damianos could be, but he wondered at the cost.

He looked down at his hands, where the first spots of age had begun to show. He closed his fingers into fists.

“What happened in Vere?”

Damianos’s face, when he laid eyes upon it, was calm.

“What would you like to know?”

“Nikandros told me what happened. He said–”

“That I was made a slave?” He did not look ashamed. Theomedes winced. The mere thought, every time he was reminded of it, made his blood boil.

“It was Jokaste’s doing, you know. Kastor would’ve had me dead. I think she meant to save me, in a way. She had me sent out of the city as my entire guard and all my people were killed.”

The mention of Lady Jokaste was unexpected, and a matter for a later time. Theomedes had barely paid any attention to Jokaste, as he did for all of Damianos’s dalliances, but he remembered that their courting had been lengthy, and intense. Damianos had certainly been more than smitten with her, and her involvement in Kastor’s plot must have hurt.

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said, although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Damen was sitting in front of him: his son, proud and strong. His voice was speaking impossible words.

“Arles is – absurd,” Damianos said. “There is _too much_ of everything. The buildings, the clothes, the perfumes, the food. The people were – I was afraid I would be killed on the spot if I was found out. The Veretians weren’t told who I was, although the Regent knew. They didn’t have slaves in Vere, so they wouldn’t have– I could have escaped, by myself. But I learned – there was a plot, Nikandros must have told you. And so…”

Damianos stopped, coughing. His face was sweaty, cheeks reddened; Theomedes watched, and he worried. He had heard the silences louder than the words. The broken phrases, the lack of specifics, all that he was not saying.

“Water,” said Damianos. His voice had turned raspy. “Please.”

The water did not come, as it should have; and that was when Theomedes remembered that he had dismissed his slaves, and it was up to him to rise and, slowly, pour water into a goblet for his son. He did so, then sat down on the mattress, his back to the headboard and one had to the back of Damianos’s head, touching warm skin and damp curls. How long had it been since the last time he’d touched his son, anything beyond a clasp of hands? A year or more, certainly. He was certain, also, that he had never sat on his son’s bed, or done anything so servile as holding a drink to his mouth.

“Thank you,” said Damianos, when he was done. His voice was odd.

“You insisted I send away my slaves.”

“I wanted us to speak alone.”

“I know.” He put his hand away but didn’t rise quite yet, gathering his strength. He thought of Damen as he had been when he’d entered the bedchamber, alone in the luminous room.

“Who’s been attending you?” he asked. “If you need something?”

“I wanted us to be alone,” said Damianos. “But I am – well taken care of.”

It was strange, to be so close, to be in any bed but his own. To be in Damianos’s chamber, which he hadn’t visited in years. He usually expected people to come to him.

“Tell me about Vere.”

“It is not so much different from Akielos.” Oddly, Damianos’s lips were curved in a small smile. “With more places to have a bath.”

“You’re tired.” His son did not deny it. “You should rest. We’ll talk… later.”

When he was healthier. When Damianos was healthier, and all their wounds had begun to close. There was no shame, he told himself, in knowing when to retreat.

He found a pale youth waiting for him at the entrance of his quarters, dressed in leather armour and heavy cottons and carrying a message from Nikandros, who had been called away on urgent business and asked to postpone their meeting to the morning. That left him, unfortunately, with nothing to do but be fussed over by the Veretian physician, who took the liberty to give instruction to Theomedes’s entire household, from the cooks to the slaves, on how to best to aid the king’s recovery.

“Palace slaves are trained in massage from the best masters in Akielos.”

“I am sure their technique is very pleasant, Your Majesty,” said the physician. His thumbs dug firmly into Theomedes’s calf. “But it will not stimulate your muscles as much as this will.”

Some of the physician’s recommendations were almost sensible, like telling Theomedes that he should first try walking in the warm waters of the baths. Some others, such as the suggestion that he built a wheeled chair, were pure Veretian foolishness.

“Do you torture my son so?” Theomedes asked, somewhat irked. The physician‘s mouth twitched.

“He weathers it better than you do.”

The exercises he was prescribed were simple enough, but gruelling on his atrophied body. That night Theomedes slept the sleep of the exhausted, not the ill, and woke up in a better mood than he had in months.

That changed, however, as soon as he was shown to Nikandros and Makedon, waiting in his antechamber, and saw the man they’d brought along. Alkaion was a commander in the palace, a soldier who under normal circumstances should only have been fifth or sixth in the chain of command yet now wore the shoulder knots of a marshal.

The list of the dead, when he requested it, was not as much lengthy as it was costly. Many of the officers, palace nobles and high functionaries who had not been involved in Kastor’s plot had been killed in the first days, and many others were being investigated. The South had sided with Kastor, which he’d already known, but it was one thing to be aware of the fact and another to entertain the ramifications. With many of the local officers under suspicion the burden of conducting the investigations and controlling the court had fallen on Nikandros’s men, of proven loyalty but unfamiliar with the ways of Ios. Things were proceeding far too slowly.

“When do you believe you will be able to return to Delpha?” Theomedes asked early into the meeting. He thought it a reasonable concern; he had not been expecting Nikandros’s sudden wince, or Makedon’s dry, thunderous laugh.

“As a condition for the alliance with the Prince of Vere,” said Nikandros – slowly, like pulling teeth. “It was agreed that Delpha should – be returned to Vere.”

“I would never agree–” Theomedes realized he had begun shouting. The tendons and muscles of his forearms, weak from disuse, shot with pain from how tightly he was grasping the arms of his chair.

“Damianos,” he said. It was not a question. Nikandros, who was Damianos’s closest friend from childhood, and had made Delpha his home, turned it from a Veretian backwater to a treasured Akielon territory, nodded.

“Why would he do that?” Damianos may have won them Delpha in the first place, but it was not his to give away. Thousands had died for it. Soldiers in the blood-red fields, peasants in the burned villages, their crops charred to ashes. At the beginning of the campaign the border had been in Sicyon; they’d taken it at a crawling pace, inch by bloody inch.

“No army is worth Delpha,” he said.

Nikandros said, “Kastor’s faction had spread rumours that Damianos had been the one to poison you, Exalted. He had been missing for months and reappeared on the wrong side of the border, and Kastor was issuing orders from the capital. The Veretian Prince held the only proof of Damianos’s innocence and Kastor’s guilt, and he asked for Delpha in exchange.”

“He drove a hard bargain,” said Makedon, who liked to count Veretian kills for sport. He didn’t look particularly displeased at the gall of this foreign prince.

Theomedes ignored him. “And you followed him in this?” he asked Nikandros, who straightened in his chair.

“You know I – care for your son, Exalted. And…” Nikandros spoke very carefully. “It was understood that, in time, I would have Ios. I could not be displeased with that.”

“You were always going to get Ios,” said Theomedes, who six years ago had made a young warrior of barely suitable lineage kyros of the coveted border lands for precisely that reason, so that he might acquire experience. “But my son does not make my treaties for me. Not yet.”

“Exalted, if I may.” He could see Nikandros pushing through his reluctance to speak. Makedon, not known for his diplomacy, looked faintly amused. Alkaion, the newly-promoted officer, was plainly trying his best to disappear into the furniture.

“At the time, on the border – news from Ios said of you that you were days away from death. Damianos signed that treaty under his own name, not in your stead, and you could disregard it entirely if you wanted. But,” said Nikandros. “It was the Prince of Vere who had you saved, and if you don’t comply they will cry treachery. And they will still get Delpha, years from now, as soon as Damianos takes the throne.”

The thought of Veretians complaining about treachery was amusing in its brazen presumption. It was madness to consider that Damianos would feel obliged to those people.

“What did they _do_ to him?”

When Nikandros remained silent Makedon took it upon himself to speak. “When we met him first, on the border, he was commanding the guard at Ravenel. Your son is a resourceful man, Exalted.”

Conscious of the presence of Alkaion in the room, Theomedes said, “Is – what befell Damianos, is it common knowledge?”

Once again Nikandros did not answer, but his darkened face was confirmation enough. Makedon made a sound very much like a snort.

“He flaunts it,” he said. “Or close enough. He was sent to Vere in slave cuffs, you know. When they signed that treaty, Damianos put one cuff on the Prince’s wrist. He still wears it.”

The thought of Damen in slave cuffs was unbearable. The thought of Damen in charge of the Veretian men of Ravenel, although odd, was far easier to contemplate. It reminded him all over again of the Veretian army camped outside his capital, of the Veretian Regent executed in his palace. When the men left two hours later, carrying newly-made plans for the southern regions and Theomedes’s messages to all his kyroi, he still hadn’t decided what to do about Delpha. Perhaps he should have Damianos explain himself, see if he regretted being strong-armed into such a costly bargain.

In the afternoon, well-rested and bathed, Theomedes set about resolving the most irritating of his current problems.

The ever-present guards were, as always, stationed just inside his apartments. By now, he had even begun to recognize some of their faces. “Have the Prince of Vere brought to my rooms,” he told them, then sat on his chair, and waited.

Theomedes waited, then waited some more. He was well past the point of impatience when the man he’d sent came back, contrite and short of breath, saying that the Prince had been found and he would be along presently.

When the door opened again it was to reveal a young man, fair and slender, clad in dark brocades and riding boots. Theomedes’s mind, uncharitably, went to all the wispy yellow-haired hopefuls Adrastus had collected over the years to present to Damianos, but the haughty lines of this boy’s face could not be mistaken for anything but Veretian arrogance.

The Prince bowed his head in greeting a minuscule amount.

“Exalted. I was glad to hear of your recovery. May I sit?”

He said all of it in Akielon, accented and overly precise, then sat himself down on the chair Nikandros had used earlier without waiting for permission. He met Theomedes’s stare with an even look of his own, blue-eyed and cool.

“You were in my rooms.” Half-awake he’d caught only glimpses, but the memory was coming back to him now. Laurent of Vere had sharp cheekbones and full lips, the sort of face that must certainly gain him extravagant courting gifts, and the ability to cajole better men than himself into doing his bidding.

“Rest assured, I was under heavy guard,” said the Prince. “I needed to speak with my physician, and he couldn’t leave your side just then.” And then. “Before you ask, my accommodations are more than suitable. We all appreciate the hospitality.”

Theomedes couldn’t hold it back anymore. He said. “I am sure they’re better than whatever you gave my son.”

If the Prince faltered, it was only for the briefest of moments. “Yes,” he said. “And, in turn, Damen’s accommodations in Arles were infinitely more luxurious than the cage on the Akielon ship that delivered him. I was told they kept him drugged.”

The admission that Damianos had suffered, the reminder of Akielon treason, the casual disrespect implied by the use of an intimate form of address; all delivered in one drawled sentence, voice calm and measured. He thought of Damianos as he’d seen him just yesterday, the maturity of experience in his eyes. He remembered Damen as a boy, devout and daring. He said, “I should pay you back for everything your people did to him.”

This time the pause was noticeable. “Perhaps you should. But it was your people who did most of the work. We don’t keep slaves in Vere, you know. I’ve always found the practice rather – disconcerting,” said the Prince. Of course, Veretians were known for partaking in public couplings, even high-ranking nobility. This sanctimonious princeling had probably engaged in more scandalous acts than half the bedslaves in Ios.

He said, “I want you out of my kingdom.”

“But we are allies now,” said the Prince, wide-eyed. “You might find yourself in need of support.”

Theomedes said, “I thought a Veretian would be more clever than presuming to threaten me in front of my own guards.”

With the corner of his eye, he saw his men stiffen; probably remembering, as Theomedes did, that Veretian troops outnumbered the Akielons just now. The Prince turned to look fully at the men and said, rather pleasantly, “Philon, do you believe I came all the way to Ios just so I could threaten an ageing man on his sickbed?”

Philon, it appeared, was the northman on duty. He swallowed visibly, from being called upon by foreign royalty in a quarrel with his own king, and from the scowl Theomedes could feel dawning on his face. He remained in silence.

The Prince said, “If I wanted you dead, I’d have let your son’s poisons do the work. And I have interests in Akielos.”

That last phrase was possibly the only true thing the princeling had said since entering the room. Theomedes studied him intently. “I have seen that you’ve posted guards on my son’s apartments,” he said. “You will allow me to do the same, for you and your Council, for as long as you are in my city.”

The Prince’s smile was wry. “Thank you for your offer of protection. Although I think I’m less at risk of betrayal than Damianos is of late. He might have need of my men still,” he said. “They’ve been guarding him since Arles.”

The pointed reminder stung as much as the Prince must have meant it to. Annoyance prickling at him, some part of Theomedes began to regret this conversation. The Prince was hard to read, harder still to predict. He didn’t know what he should demand, what to bargain with. He felt as though he were walking blind, risking to stumble on his own feet and bump against every corner, made uneasy by the unflinching gaze of a boy.

Theomedes didn’t know anything about Laurent of Vere. After the war, Vere had turned from bitter adversary to toothless foe. The borders were heavily guarded, trade relationship kept to a bare minimum. Politically, Theomedes had only concerned himself with Vere when it influenced relations with Vask. The only intelligence he ever requested, sparsely, had been on the Regent. Hardly a thought had been spared for the new heir, a youth still, who by all accounts did not care for politics and would be happy letting his uncle govern his country once he ascended.

Now, he found himself dangerously uninformed. Laurent, he had no doubt, would know far more about him; from the weeks-long joint campaign with Akielos, from Damianos, from spending days in the palace with Theomedes still recovering. There was, along with the growing need to even the field, the sudden realization that the boy in front of him had set himself up as his equal, to be dealt with as such.

Another thought: Theomedes may know next to nothing about the Prince of Vere, his character, his ambitions and his weaknesses, but there was one thing.

“From now on,” he said. “You treat with me. Leave my son out of it.”

That blue-eyed surprise couldn’t be anything but feigned. “Is this about Delfeur?” Laurent’s command of spoken Akielon was excellent; in the midst of it, the Veretian word stood out starkly. For some reason, he began picking at his stiff sleeve. “You can consider it a trade, for your life.”

The thought of Damen’s ill-advised treaty didn’t burn nearly as much as the casual, uncaring way this foreign prince kept bringing the conversation back to his son. He did so with deliberate awareness, but with a relaxed manner, as if it were a matter of course that he spoke about Damianos like that, whenever he wished. It was, Theomedes thought, sickened, _proprietary_.

“You know well what this is about.”

“I do.” He had unlaced the sleeve at the cuff; and there it was, around a slender wrist, the clasp of gold. Akielon made. Theomedes had seen its like hundreds of times before, around the palace.

“Do you like it?” Laurent asked, as if it were jewellery. “A gift from an ally. I will treat with you,” he said. “But Damen and I – we have a bond.”

That name, again. The sardonic tone, the exposed cuff. When Laurent left, without waiting to be dismissed, Theomedes felt like throwing something at the door as it swung closed behind that golden head. He turned to the guardsman Laurent had addressed earlier.

“If I learn you have been consorting with Vere,” said Theomedes. He didn’t have to finish; the soldier had gone pale.

“Exalted,” he said. “I am no traitor. I – have seen the Prince in Karthas, and here in the palace, and he spoke to me, but I haven’t, I promise. I didn’t even think he’d know my name.”

“What did he speak about?” Theomedes couldn’t see the reasoning behind a prince choosing to accost a common soldier unless he’d been trying to turn him to his side. If he had meant to gather information, he would have been better served by sending one of his guards.

“In Karthas, when I was guarding the fort he spoke to me of Damianos-exalted,” said the man. Theomedes’s hand, aching as it was, curled into a weak fist. “Told me he was indisposed one afternoon, and I should have visitors turned away from his chambers. Another time, he made a comment about Akielon fighting styles. In Ios – the Prince asked me when Makedon would arrive in the city, and where to find the stables one evening. Once he asked if we would have liked to have something brought up from the kitchen, and if I knew where Kyros Nikandros was.”

“And you thought this was information to give to an enemy?”

“Exalted,” said the soldier. His name was Philon, as the Prince of Vere would know. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, and he looked as confused as a slave whose services had been turned away.

Theomedes understand well enough: this princeling, residing in the palace on Damianos’s invitation, was not an enemy. He had grown old enough that he should appreciate peace, but it left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.

He drew in a breath. He ought to summon the palace steward and learn about his people, the state of their affairs, the amount of wreckage the Veretian delegation had inflicted on his court. He should inquire about his own household, find out who needed to be replaced, who he should reward for their services.

All of this could wait. There was something else he needed to do before it was too late.

And so he called on his guard and all his remaining strength, and he made the trip down to the stone bowels of the palace, to see his son for the last time.

The sight was not pleasant. It had been days, and death was not kind. Still, the body had been well taken care of, washed and perfumed and oiled. Theomedes thought of Hypermenestra’s hands running over the body of the son they’d made together, picking his finest tunic, glueing the sunken eyes shut. His hair would have been brushed with care, but it had lost its shine and now fell limp over waxy, ashen skin and thinned lips. It was cool in the crypts, between thick stone walls, and the scented candles kept odours at bay, but the corpse had begun to bloat. These were not Kastor’s chiselled features, Kastor’s warrior body.

Perhaps Theomedes should have come earlier. Perhaps it was easier this way, that he should see his firstborn when he was undoubtedly a corpse, and did not look at all like the man he had been.

His face was wet. There was no shame in crying, no shame in mourning. Theomedes wished he could have remembered earlier that there was no shame in sentiment, either. His mind went back to yesterday, holding Damianos in his chambers, realizing how long it had been since the last time he’d allowed his only remaining child a fatherly touch. How long ago had he held Kastor for the last time, like a son? Years and years. Long enough that Kastor and Damianos would still have been close. They had been the most devoted of brothers, once. Kastor had taught Damen how to swim, and gifted him with his first horse.

There was the sound of footsteps approaching. He knew from the familiar cadence of sandaled feet that it would be Hypermenestra behind him; it was the two of them now, alone in the room with the dead body of their son.

Theomedes had walked the few steps from the door with a cane, and now he had to hold himself steady with one hand to the wall, every inch an old man. When he turned his head to look he saw that Hypermenestra had new lines on her face and deep shadows under her eyes. Her hair held more grey than brown, now, but she wore it as always, braided up and around her head, impeccable in that even in distress. Theomedes had always thought that she should have been a queen.

He should, perhaps, say something. Call her name, maybe, or share stories of Kastor’s childhood and all the fond memories of greener years. Or he should scream at her, shake her shoulders with the last of his feeble energies, and ask her when she'd first known.

Theomedes did none of that. She came to stand close so that he could feel her body heat, the smell of her hair, the sensation of her flowing tunic brushing his shoulder, a burst of breeze in this lifeless dungeon.

“We should have him put to rest,” said Hypermenestra. It was the first words he could remember hearing from her in months. “It is time.”

The burial, they both knew, would be done much as this viewing was: in the darkness in silence, like an illicit shame. There would be no processions and no mourners for Kastor, only thick regret and the chocking feel of tragedy.

“You know that Damianos will want to be there.”

Next to him, he felt her stiffen. She said, “Of course, Exalted.”

Later, she did cry. They had the body entombed in the night, and Theomedes’s arms and legs ached with the effort of keeping upright to watch this, this final farewell. Grief and exhaustion brought them together; he held Hypermenestra as he hadn’t in months, months he’d spent poisoned in bed. In truth, perhaps she was the one holding him upright. Some paces behind, Nikandros was doing the same for Damianos, who had ripped his stitches almost immediately after leaving his chambers. He was bleeding under his bandages, like a sacrificial offer.

And then it was done, Kastor sealed away to find his place in the afterlife. Hypermenestra dutifully helped him past the doorway, where his escort was waiting with a chair so that he might rest. Her clothing was ripped, as it suited mourning, but her hair was still perfect in her braid. It looked very much like a crown.

“I will wait for your summon in the coming days, Exalted,” she said, when they parted at the stone archway. Her voice was poised. Earlier, she had bowed to Damianos as deeply as if they’d been in court, and then proceeded to ignore him resolutely. Now she looked him in the eye, brazenly, as if he were not the King. “We probably should talk.”

She was, as often was the case, uncomfortably right. It would not be enjoyable; it might even destroy them. But he nodded his permission and Hypermenestra went, looking for all the world as if she did not have an armed retinue escorting her to the prison of her quarters.

Shortly after, a pallet was fetched for Damianos. Theomedes watched as his son protested, good-naturedly, that the bleeding was minor, and there was no need to inconvenience half the palace staff at this hour, and he could walk perfectly well. Still he let himself be laid down easily enough, and Nikandros made a joke about how he didn’t have enough strength to wrestle a kitten that was perhaps a little too loud, a little too forced; but Damianos smiled, and Theomedes was thankful for it.

They went. The next time he saw Nikandros it was mere hours later, but there had been time to put some scarce rest between Theomedes and his grief, and now golden sunlight bathed the day with new promises. Nikandros was wholly serious, presenting his reports as his King took his breakfast, and Theomedes could see then that there would be many more mornings like this, all through his long recovery and after.

He realized, there and then, that he’d begun to think as if Nikandros’s appointment to Ios were all but certain, even though it was a choice that he hadn’t made himself. Theomedes felt much like he had yesterday when he’d summoned the Prince of Vere and found himself blindsided. It had been a mistake to speak with Laurent alone, but he’d felt unease at the thought of relying on Nikandros too much. His own advisors were either compromised or dead, and these surrounding him were Damen’s men. It made it feel as though he had a foot in the grave already.

Theomedes told himself that it would not become an issue. Damianos lacked Kastor’s ambition, and he willingly followed his father’s lead in all the ways that mattered. He was a loving son, and loyal, and wouldn’t ever put himself between a man and his King.

“I spoke with the Prince yesterday.”

Nikandros stopped talking, looking up from where he’d been tracing troop movements on a map of Thrace. He waited.

Theomedes said, “Tell me he’s not bedding that boy.”

The thought had first come to him last night when he’d seen Damianos carted away to his rooms, chest bandaged and arms bared, the familiar flicker of torchlight on gold. He had been told about the cuff, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight. Theomedes knew that slave cuffs couldn’t be removed: they needed to be pried open by a blacksmith. There would have been a collar, too. His son on his knees for foreign nobility. The picture was obscene.

When he’d first heard Nikandros’s account of Damianos’s time in Vere, he had been horrified. That had abated, somewhat, early on as he learned about plots and deceits and political alliances. Certainly, he had assured himself, Damianos wouldn’t extend friendship to the Prince of Vere if he’d treated him like one would a slave. But then he’d seen the boy, the way he carried himself, as though everything was owed to him. It had been that unwavering pride, more than the colouring, that had reminded Theomedes inevitably of Lady Jokaste.

Nikandros didn’t offer any denials. He gave the sort of wry, humourless smile that was to be expected of a long-time friend, and he said, “I’ve come to believe that the situation isn’t – as bad as it could have been.”

He went on. “Exalted. I say this as Damen’s friend. He is… infatuated, and I worry. But the Veretian Prince was there when Damen was stabbed, and he stopped the bleeding with his own hands – he would have bled out otherwise. And yesterday,” said Nikandros. “When we got back from Kastor’s funeral rites, he was waiting in Damen’s rooms, to offer him comfort.”

It was the longest Theomedes had ever heard Nikandros talk about Damianos, fastidious as he was about keeping his duties as kyros and his friendship with the heir to the throne separate. Nikandros’s words were meant to be reassuring, and they certainly were to an extent; it was a relief to know that his son’s foolish affections weren’t utterly one-sided. But he remembered a softly-accented voice saying, _We have a bond_ , and he thought he would have preferred that Laurent of Vere had used Damen and discarded him, painfully, instead of deciding he’d rather keep him.

“It will not last,” Theomedes said, to himself as much as Nikandros. “He’ll leave for Vere and – you know how Damianos is.”

Nikandros made a noise that may have been of assent. He said, “If you intend to send for the Prince again, Exalted, I could – I’ve sat in strategy meetings with him before.” And then he said. “Makedon quite likes him, for some reason.”

“Makedon does have his occasional blind spots,” said Theomedes, who’d known him for decades and remembered him as a reckless fool before he’d been a renowned strategist. That Makedon tolerated the Prince told him plenty about the boy’s character, some of which could be useful. Still, it was a supreme annoyance to learn that one of his few remaining loyal generals had taken leave of his senses because a foreign princeling had shown some spunk.

“About Thrace,” he said, and Nikandros sat up straighter over all of his maps. “How many dispatches are you still waiting on?”

They continued on that note for half the morning, the other half and the afternoon being reserved for exercise and massages so that he might take back the reins of his kingdom sooner, as the Veretian physician had put it with his usual insufferable aplomb. The man was certainly efficient, but Theomedes would be glad to see the back of him.

In the evening he went to visit Damianos, resolving not to ask any questions and listen to what his son would have to say. Damen, it turned out, wanted to talk about Kastor. Some of his stories were light-hearted and some filled him with a new grim feeling that was still too terrible to acknowledge.

Three days later Theomedes received immediate, first-hand evidence of Makedon’s bizarre liking for the Prince of Vere, the first time they found themselves in the same room to discuss Damianos’s foolish transfer of Delpha over refreshments and wine.

It was a far cry from the grief-heavy battlefield tent where the Regent of Vere had negotiated surrender over six years ago, when Prince Laurent had still been half a child, eyes reddened from crying. Today he entered alone, by all appearances unfazed to be conducting negotiations without any advisors and in a language that was not his own. He came prepared with a list of concessions that was quite generous, from trade privileges to rights and protection for Akielon citizens in Delpha after it would revert back to Vere, as if it could compensate for the fact that he’d done nothing to deserve those lands in the first place.

Laurent refused all wines and foods that were offered to him by Theomedes’s slaves, until Makedon pointed to a plate of honeyed cheese and said, “Laurent, try it, you have nothing like this in Vere.”

Theomedes watched, feeling as though something in the world wasn’t quite right, as the Prince carefully tried a mouthful of the offered food and agreed that yes, Akielon cheeses were nothing like what they had in Vere. Makedon laughed at the admission with the satisfied air he often got when he talked about dead Veretians, and took some cheese for himself.

With Makedon, Laurent was almost friendly, a little amused, occasionally blinking slightly in surprise. To Nikandros he was perfectly polite, except for the times when he delivered barbed remarks clearly calculated to shook. With Theomedes he was overly proper and icy, and avoided looking at his face in a way that in an Akielon might have been taken for deference, but put Theomedes ill at ease.

The consultation ended with no agreement except for the intention to meet again tomorrow, and as Laurent made to leave Theomedes turned his eyes to the heavy sleeve that hid the heavy gold cuff, and thought of the day he would leave for good.

Kleon, the palace steward, who was under suspicion for working with Kastor but could not easily be replaced, informed Theomedes that there were a number of Veretian nobles housed in one of the wings, along with their retinues and personal guards, and plenty of officers coming and going from the camp outside the city.

Surely, they could not wait to leave. The sun of Ios would be too hot for their indoor skins, the foods too sharp, the fashions too unseemly. Yet they were all still here, and it seemed that their Prince kept them on a tight leash, for none of Theomedes’s functionaries heard anything from the Veretian delegation that wasn’t directly reported by the men Laurent had appointed specifically for the task.

When Theomedes asked to speak to a member of the Council, all five of whom were in the city, in the hope they might put pressure on Laurent, he was introduced to a woman with a knifelike smile who asked after his health with a choice of words that made it clear she was plenty familiar with Veretian poisons. As far as Theomedes knew, there were no women on the Council of Vere.

“Recent appointment,” said the woman, who introduced herself as Lady Vannes. “You must know something about that, Your Majesty. We’ve heard that so many of your people had to be replaced, lately.”

Nevertheless, he managed to learn that the Veretians had begun making preparations for travel by ship, a veritable fleet that had to be sent for from the Prince’s own estates on the coast, as the Regent hadn’t brought nearly enough ships to transport all the soldiers camped outside of Ios. Laurent’s return to his capital, whenever it came to pass, would have him swiftly and efficiently subduing any armed resistance he might find from his uncle’s men. It was a plan Theomedes might have admired, had he not been told that Kastor had used a much similar strategy to seize control of Ios with the Regent’s forces. Foreign troops in disguise, against honest Akielon soldiers. The thought was like bile in his mouth.

He spent two more days in negotiations over Delpha, endlessly frustrating. Laurent wouldn’t give an inch, and he liked to drown his interlocutors in endless rebuttals, quicker than even Nikandros to cite census numbers and trade statistics as though he’d lived in Delpha all his life. Even Aleron, whom Theomedes had strongly disliked, wouldn’t have been so coolly arrogant, so readily defiant.

The afternoon of the second day he had to pass judgement on two dozen officers, all of them capable men from powerful families whose loyalty had to be thoroughly examined before any irreversible decision was made, and the day ran very late. He went to visit Damianos in his chambers after, as it had become custom.

It was still odd, to go to his son instead of sending for him, but that insufferable physician had made it clear that Theomedes needed to rebuild his strength just as much as Damianos needed to remain in bed. They would spend some time together, quietly, almost every day, but today he had been delayed so long that Damianos was asleep when he arrived.

Sitting next to Damen, on the low cushioned divan that Theomedes realized must have been brought in for exactly that reason, was Prince Laurent, a book in his hands and an expression of supreme indifference on his face.

“He’s sleeping,” Laurent spoke in a low murmur. As if Theomedes hadn’t eyes to see it.

“What are you doing here?” He heard himself ask, a furious hiss. Damen, ill as he was, should have capable attendants and skilled nurses on hand, someone to care for him, and yet Laurent must have sent everyone out because the chambers were deserted.

“Reading.” He turned a page with too much strength, and Theomedes heard the rustling of crumpled paper. “Akielon literature is limited in themes and scope, but I have to admit, I enjoy the prose.” And then, “Is there anything you needed? I could send for a servant.”

Theomedes thought back to his first conversation with Laurent, how he’d waded into it like a blind man walking into a trap. He wanted to know how often this boy found himself in Damen’s rooms, and what they spoke of. Why he was doing any of this, instead of riding at full speed to Arles, where an empty throne awaited him.

Instead, he said, “Will he wake up soon?”

Laurent blinked long eyelashes in surprise. “No. He… he sleeps a lot, most days.” His voice had gone strangely soft. “He wakes up at about midmorning, sleeps in the afternoons, and again at sunset.” Again he didn’t meet Theomedes’s eyes, head turned away to stare at Damianos on the bed.

Theomedes looked at the Prince of Vere looking at Damen and felt something cold in his stomach. It was fear; it took him time to identify the feeling, unfamiliar with it as he was. Even when he’d thought he would die, he hadn’t been afraid. When was the last time he had truly been scared? At Marlas, perhaps, watching Damen ride off against Auguste of Vere. He wanted to ask Laurent if he thought it a fitting revenge, to take Theomedes’s son away from him.

The next morning he had Nikandros handle his affairs for him, telling him that whatever he did he had to reach an accord over Delpha by the end of the day. There were more important legacies, he thought, than a mere piece of land.

He was standing in front of Damianos’s rooms by mid-morning, and walked in to find him in high spirits, lips curved into an easy smile.

“Father,” Damen said. “I wasn’t expecting you so early.” He sounded pleased.

“You were sleeping yesterday,” said Theomedes, who had the feeling that Damianos had been informed of his visit already. The look he received made that clear.

“Did he spend the night in your rooms?” The words were harsher to his ears than he’d meant them to be. It wasn’t a reproach, but he needed to know. To understand.

Damianos cast a look that was guarded, like those of a spooked alleyway cat. “Not the whole night.”

“Damen,” said Theomedes. “You…” He paused. “Once you’re recovered, I’d like you to go on a tour of the kingdom. Ishthima, Kesus. Perhaps Thrace.”

“Of course,” said Damianos. “I should be out of bed by the end of the week. I thought I could help,” he said, his face turning animated. “I know you’ve been negotiating Delpha and I thought, since I was the one to arrange the alliance in the first place–”

“No.” He said it too quickly. Damianos frowned. “That’s handled, son.”

The room fell quiet. It was bright as usual, warm and airy, and Damianos’s chest was bared. The gold cuff would be his wrist, if he cared to look. He sat down on the low couch, taking notice of the book on the bedside table, the same Laurent had been reading last night. It was an incongruous sight in these rooms. Damianos preferred well-known epics to more recent literature, and he usually liked to have them read to him, but best of all he liked to have them sung.

There was nobody to do that, here. In fact, the sight of Damianos’s apartments bereft of slaves had become so familiar that Theomedes too had taken to leaving his own behind since he’d stopped needing constant assistance, so strongly Damianos had made known his desire to be alone when they spoke. He had known that Damianos’s entire household had been slaughtered, and that of course included his slaves, but he hadn’t quite realized it until yesterday, after Laurent had offered to call for a servant. Forgetting, perhaps, that in the palace no free servants would do the body work of slaves.

Theomedes put the thought into words.

“You aren’t using any slaves,” he said, voicing it like a question. Damianos’s face twitched, an odd, self-conscious look.

“Father. You know that…” He did something with his hands. Probably touching that hideous piece of metal on his arm, perhaps tracing a clasp that would not open. He would need a hammer for that. “You know what happened,” Damianos said. He made an encompassing gesture that was very Veretian. “How could I?”

“What do you mean?” He struggled to make sense of the words. That was guilt, clear as day on his son’s face. “Do you feel – at fault, for something?” Had Damen not refused to tell him what happened in Vere, perhaps he could understand him better.

“You surely must know that it is not the same. You are not a slave,” Theomedes pushed the words out with difficulty. Certainly, Damianos must know this. “Regardless of what they did to you. And,” he said, grasping desperately at the thought. “I was lead to believe that you weren’t… treated as one.”

If anything, not even a Veretian would mistake his headstrong son for a trained garden slave. They would have seen immediately how proud and stubborn he was. They would have seen that he wouldn’t go to his knees for the Veretian masters. The more he thought about it, the more sickening images swirled into his mind.

“Treated as one,” Damianos said, his voice rough. “They…”

He trailed off, turned his head away to look at some dark corner. Then, “The Akielon slaves they sent with me were mistreated in Vere,” he said. “Greatly. At the time, I blamed the Veretians. They were sadistic and cruel and took it out on innocents, but – we trained them.” He said that with the tone one would use to speak of some dark, sickening secret. “We take boys and girls, and make them into – playthings, and they would stop breathing if their masters ordered them to, and that’s–”

Theomedes said, “Damen,” and Damen stopped speaking. He said it so that Damen would stop speaking. Incredulous. “Son, I know you suffered in Vere but.. you cannot tell me you believe caring for slaves is,” he paused, searching for the word. “Immoral.”

“Caring.” The word hung heavily in the air between them, drenched with misplaced righteousness as it was. “Father, I don’t know if I can explain this as I should,” said Damianos. “But I will not be served by slaves again.”

Theomedes remembered abruptly hearing something quite similar a week ago, spoken in an exotic lilt. The thought of his son being reduced to a mouthpiece for that boy annoyed him beyond reason. It was quite Veretian, undoubtedly, to turn Damianos against his own people and their traditions so thoroughly.

“Is that why you wear that – trinket?” He said it harshly, and Damianos winced. “How do you think it will look? Your own people will think you disgraced.”

“I’ve worn it for weeks. If you believe it diminished my authority in any way,” said Damianos. “You are free to ask Makedon about it.”

Had Damianos’s authority been compromised, he would not have taken Ios as he had. But it would be unthinkable for an Akielon general or his men to disobey the command of a Prince; obedience did not mean private agreement with all decisions, merely good discipline. Akielon troops were disciplined just as Akielon slaves were: one entire society, wholly intertwined, all people in their proper places. Damianos’s words were of folly.

“You’ll go to Ishthima. With or without slaves, as you please, but I want you to go. Let me know when you’ll be ready to travel.” He made to rise. “Damen,” he said. “If you could… talk to me.”

“I want,” he said. “Father, I wish – if I could find the words.”

Damianos looked down to his lap, then met Theomedes’s eyes with something skittish about his gaze. “I took Ravenel, you know.” There was a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “With – it was the worst kind of Veretian trickery; all I could think about was that you would hate it. But… _Ravenel_. I could tell you about it,” he said. “Will you come by tonight? We could take dinner together.”

His breath, Theomedes found, wasn’t coming out quite as evenly as it should. “Yes,” he said. “Tonight.”

They would begin to rebuild.

When he reached his rooms that afternoon he noticed the Veretian soldiers immediately, with their tall boots and blue uniforms. He was not surprised when he was informed by his own guard that the Prince of Vere awaited him in his sitting room, having apparently decided to invite himself inside whether Theomedes allowed it or not.

“I find myself suddenly in possession of a new province,” Laurent said, when a more civilized man would have offered greetings and apologies. “And, unlike yesterday, I’ve hardly had to bargain for it. Either your kyros has taken leave of his senses, or I have you to thank for it. Which one is it?”

It was rare that Laurent looked at him; he often seemed to enjoy pretending Theomedes was either invisible or not worthy of recognition. Yet now he did, a long cold look heavy with disbelief.

“You’ve got what you wanted.”

“Yes,” said Laurent. And then in a different voice. “ _Yes_. Did you truly think–” He laughed.

He’d been sitting on a chair, sprawled among Veretian cushions he must have had brought in for the express purpose of making his idle lounging insufferable to the eye. Theomedes had sat also; he had left his guards outside the door, as he’d taken to do since he had begun recovering in earnest. If not for a handful of slaves they were completely alone, Laurent and himself, for the very first time.

Then Laurent stood, closing the brief distance between them. He looked to Theomedes from his full height. “Do you think me some coin-hungry harlot?” His voice was oddly raw to the ear, as if he’d tried to play at amusement but couldn’t manage it without scraping his throat dry. “That you might pay me off and send me away.”

He thought of Damianos, with his gold slave cuff, looking drained from the inside out. “With all that you’ve gained by spreading your legs,” he said. “You’re as good as.”

Laurent laughed again. “Don’t,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to provoke me. Lucky for you, I’ve heard worse.”

He sat back down, seemingly unfazed. “I’ve spent the last two weeks thinking we’d all be better off if I’d let you die. Perhaps I should have. But Damen would have been heartbroken. Losing family is – not pleasant,” he said. “So here we are.”

The boy spoke with intolerable arrogance, talking of life and death as if he were a god. With those icy eyes and impassive face, he might even look the part. He would go back to Vere soon enough, and with luck Damianos would find himself some other lover, someone warm and simple and easily forgotten.

“You don’t need him anymore,” Theomedes said. It would be faster, cleaner, if it were Laurent to walk away and if he were to do it now; and then they could all heal for good.

He was met with an arch of golden brows, a slow smile. “You think I couldn’t want him for his own sake? You do your son a disservice. He’s kind and caring, and a good man.” Damianos was all of those things, but he didn’t think a Prince of Vere would care. The boy went on. “And, you should know.” The smile turned sharp. “He’d cut his own hearth from his chest and give it to me if I asked him to.”

Theomedes felt as though he had been slapped. Words, he told himself; these were just words, from a conceited new lover. Laurent caught his eyes, gauged his reaction and found that he had wounded. He looked oddly self-satisfied.

“Does my kind, caring son,” Theomedes spat out the words. “Know how hateful you are?”

“What, were you expecting me to be nice?” The Prince sounded, suddenly, like a boy of twenty. “To _you_? You killed my family.”

“It’s odd,” Theomedes remarked, calmly, to the room. “I seem to remember Damen having more of a hand in that than myself. Maybe you’ve forgotten that detail, so you could feel better about bedding him.”

Laurent had gone ghastly pale, eyes narrowed. “ _You_ ,” he said, then stopped. “Damianos was younger than I am now, and I can see – I can excuse him for wanting to win glory for his country. But you – my mother’s body was barely cold when the Kemptian ambassador left Arles. I’ve always wondered what you promised them. You had your Patran alliance and we were – I think it was two, three weeks after her funeral that you dragged us into war. Hardly that.”

His voice had taken on that raw quality again, thick with a strange fervour. “You conquered and you burned in the name of rights your grandfathers had lost a century ago. And maybe I am lying to myself,” he said. “But if Damen might deserve that I fool myself for his sake, you certainly don’t. You get to receive all my ire.”

Then he said, “Then again, Damen and I are even now. I killed his brother, too. Of course, it was a bad trade. My brother never stabbed me.”

There was a distant noise in his ears, like the rumble of a waterfall. “What do you mean?” His voice sounded old, and afraid.

“Kastor,” Laurent said, dragging out the sounds. As if he’d found a weak point and were pressing on it, to see how much it hurt. “Did you think he slipped and fell on his own sword, after knifing Damen in the gut? I saw it.” His voice had turned reminiscing. “Damen embraced Kastor. Offered him peace. Kastor stabbed him before he could see the knife.”

Distantly, Theomedes thought he might prefer it when Laurent avoided looking him in the face. There was a manic note in those blue eyes now. They burned. He felt as though he’d been cut open with a blade, neck to navel. When Damianos had cut down Auguste of Vere at Marlas, the killing stroke had been clean. There was nothing clean about this.

Laurent said, “I said you shouldn’t provoke me.”

Theomedes wanted, badly, to hit him in the mouth until he bleed. But he was a King. He gathered all of his strength to himself, and he said, “I’ve heard you’re making arrangements to sail for Arles. I want you to leave within two days.”

“Of course. You know that Damen will be welcome to visit whenever he’ll prefer.”

Theomedes said, “He’ll be busy.”

“We’ll make time.” He received a smile that was thin, and very sharp. “There was talk of a retreat in Lentos. Very romantic. A favourite spot of your late Queen?” There was plenty unsaid there, haughty Veretian prejudice and the ignorance of a boy who knew nothing of love and duty warring against each other.

“It’s a lovely place,” Theomedes said. “Take my word for it because I doubt you’ll ever see it. I know my son,” he said. “You and your people will be gone a week and he’ll forget you ever existed.”

“Aden,” he said, and the slave rose up from where he’d been kneeling in the corner. “Please see the Prince to the door. He’s not to be allowed access again.”

It was easy enough to rid himself of Laurent of Vere once and for all; less so to expunge every trace of him, as he wished to. Damianos’s face, when they met for dinner that night, made that clear enough.

“I’ve heard,” he said.

Have you. Theomedes could easily imagine from whom. He did not want to blame his son, but often when he looked at him he couldn’t help but think: Damen took that boy to bed. He embraced him, kissed that poisonous mouth.

“Laurent.” Damianos pronounced it the Veretian way, with a reverence that was frightening in its implications. “Can be quite despicable when he wants to.”

Despicable was certainly one word to describe it. “You know that your lover bragged to my face about killing my son,” said Theomedes. “Your brother.”

“He saved my life, it wasn’t – it wasn’t retribution. He didn’t plan on it.” Damianos was looking everywhere but to his father. “I would have died if he hadn’t.”

“Is it true?” Theomedes needed to know. They were meant to be talking about Ravenel this evening; something they could both understand and take amusement in. He had meant to share Damianos’s burdens, and begin to learn about the man his son had turned into. But he the image had burned its way into his mind: Damen, embracing Kastor. A hidden knife.

“That Kastor stabbed you, when you…”

“I didn’t want you to know.”

That was as good as an admission. Theomedes had begun to mourn Kastor, as the boy he had been once and the man he could have been, and the man he had known instead. A father couldn’t simply stop loving a son, and it had been easier when told himself that Kastor had been a principled man who’d made a mistake, letting himself be swindled by the honeyed words of a foreign snake. But this was harder to accept, Kastor acting so treacherously. He thought he’d taught his sons better than that.

“Can I,” said Damen. “Father, you should know–”

“Yes.” He didn’t know what he was agreeing to, but of course Theomedes wanted to know. Of course he would say yes.

“Kastor told me, when he saw me again, he told me it’d have been better if I’d stayed in Vere,” said Damianos. “Is that what you’d want, too?” He looked up at his father, a hint of defiance in his earnest eyes. Defiance, where there had been none before. “Did you like me better as I was before? Things were easier then. I was thoughtless. Blind and happy.”

“Damen,” he said, and he found that he couldn’t speak.

He wanted Damen to know that he could see how the person his son had become, whoever that was, had come at great personal cost. That Theomedes didn’t know that man did not mean that he didn’t wish to. Perhaps one day he might begin to understand.

“Damen,” he said, again. “You know that I’m always proud of you.”


	2. Coda

Slowly, they began to rebuild.

The Prince of Vere did indeed leave two days later, obliging for once, and he took all of his nobles and his soldiers with him. As a newly minted ally, Theomedes saw him off at the docks, so that his people could also see that their King was alive and well.

That meant that Theomedes and Laurent had to share the carriage. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been: Damianos could have insisted to come along, his wound a very visible reminder of Kastor’s treason, the gold cuff a reminder of other things. Or Laurent could have ridden ahead, a brilliant young man in the prime of his life, with the King of Akielos following along like an infirm. This way they could pass off the carriage ride as deferring to Veretian frailty, their love for luxury. Accordingly, the inside of the carriage was decorated like a brothel.

Sitting with them was Nikandros, along with Councillor Herode, whom Theomedes remembered vaguely from Marlas. Herode was to assume the authority of the Regency in all but name, because Veretian inheritance laws were needlessly complicated even in the wake of a civil war, and he tried gamely to do his part to improve relations between their kingdoms in the short duration of the carriage ride.

“I’d never been in Akielos in the summer,” Herode began, in Veretian because he could not speak a word of Akielon. This was likely his first time setting foot beyond the border, in the summer or otherwise.

“We’ve heard it’s an excellent season for sea travel.”

Nikandros made a polite noise of agreement. “The best season,” he said. “Calm seas make for excellent seafaring conditions, all along the coast.”

That was, unfortunately, true: it would still be a good few weeks before the autumn storms began to swell the seas in earnest, and there was little chance that the Veretians would drown on their way to Marches. Nikandros went on to recount the many ship voyages he had been on as a younger man, and avoided mentioning the years he’d spent in Delpha entirely. Both he and Herode had the good sense to leave the other two occupants of the carriage out of the conversation.

Theomedes let his eyes fall on the interior of the carriage, the gaudy silks and velvet upholstery. Laurent had his head turned away so that he was looking through a rift in the curtains into the streets, even though there was nothing to see on that side but the wooden homes of the poorer classes of Ios.

Weak as he still was, he felt every crack of the stones on the road deep in his tired bones through all those plush pillows. Once they arrived, protocol dictated he dismounted first. Theomedes took a long breath to steady himself then, slowly, he emerged.

There were cheers. The sound reinvigorated him, even as he fought so that his legs would not shake. These were his people, and he would show them a healthy King.

The departure, when it came to it, was a brief affair.

All of the Veretian ships but two had made land in a nearby bay, where all that could reasonably fit above or below deck had been made to fit, everything and everyone else would follow along on land at a more leisurely pace. The two ships docked in Ios proper, which were to carry the nobility, had been taking passengers since early that morning. By the time they arrived there was nothing left to do than wait for the Prince to board, then his Guard, then his Council, then the last remaining odd Veretians, and then they would finally leave Akielon soil and go back to poisoning each other and fucking on silk cushions.

Theomedes bid Laurent good travels, publicly and formally, and was answered in kind. Then Laurent went to board the ship and disappeared immediately into one of the cabins, as if he didn’t want to bother with the sight of Akielos any longer. Theomedes considered doing the same and leaving immediately, but the thought of seeing the Veretian ships disappear beyond the curve of the cliffs appealed to him.

Nikandros, who had once said he would rest at ease once the Prince of Vere was gone, watched the ships depart with narrowed eyes.

That night Theomedes again went to visit Damianos, who was making a blatant effort to appear unaffected by the day’s events. Damianos had requestioned a squire to help him dress for dinner, because he still insisted not to use slaves, and the poor boy had turned red-faced from how uncomfortable being the object of discussion between his King and the King’s son had made him. It was below a future warrior to perform a task so servile, even if requested by a prince; Damianos nodded, and promised that he would make arrangements for servants soon. If he’d meant that to sound comforting, it certainly was not. Apparently, Damianos had delayed in searching for servants because in the past two weeks helping him put on a chiton and drink water in bed had been the purview of the Prince of Vere. That, too, was not comforting.

During dinner, Theomedes was finally treated to the story of the occupation of Ravenel, which was nonsensical, wildly entertaining, and deeply dishonourable.

“I know,” Damen said. Theomedes didn’t think he’d realized he was smiling. “It was Laurent’s idea.”

He looked young, and he looked smitten. Like the sun, he thought nonsensically. Staring at him hurt.

Damianos left for Ishthima five days later. In the days leading up to the departure, Theomedes finished dealing with the remainders of Kastor’s coup. He appointed a new commander of the city guard, invited plenty of younger sons of kyroi and country officers to court, and allowed the palace steward to keep his place. He appointed Nikandros as kyros if Ios and did not insult him by giving him a speech about duty and conflicting loyalties. There was a feast after the appointment, not as grand as it could have been, and for the first time in months the people of Ios saw Damen healthy and alive. When he smiled, he looked so much like the man he had been only a few short months ago, the man who was truly more of a boy, and was now so thoroughly gone.

Two days after Damianos’s departure, he spoke with Hypermenestra. It was lengthy, and painful, like throwing salt water on a wide skin gash so that it wouldn’t infect. They agreed that she should wait out her mourning period in one of his estates in Aegina, away from the stress of the court and under guard.

And so Theomedes was left in his marble capital, with none of his family left with him, and it was almost by chance that he learned of Lady Jokaste’s child.

“Why was I not informed earlier?”

Nikandros had been the one to mention it, almost offhandedly, as though it were a minor matter. Perhaps Theomedes should have given him that speech on conflicting loyalties, after all.

Nikandros said: they never saw the child. They didn’t know where he had been born, or indeed whether it truly was a boy. They didn’t know whether they could trust Lady Jokaste. They didn’t know who the father was although Nikandros, privately, suspected it was Damianos’s child, but he couldn’t be sure. He pointed out the timing of the birth and Jokaste’s part in ensuring Damianos was sent to Vere instead of killed when his death would have been the only way to guarantee with certainty that a child of Kastor’s would sit on the throne.

It felt odd, when he thought about it, how little time had truly passed. Theomedes had been ill for the better part of a year, but it had been considerably shorter time than that between Damianos’s sham of a funeral rite and his return. Four months between the time Theomedes had fallen delirious for good and when he’d woken up in his bedroom in a palace filled to the brink with soldiers.

He learned that they had no idea of where Jokaste had disappeared to, or whether the child was even still alive, because Damianos, foolishly, had been more concerned with the health of his foreign snake of a lover than his own flesh and blood. When Theomedes was informed that the Prince had traded himself for his grandson, he remained quiet for a moment.

“Do all that you can to find her,” he said. After that, they would see.

Damianos returned from Ishthima with all the goodwill a beloved prince back from the dead could muster in his people, and immediately began to make preparations for his next mission. Once again, he took no slaves in his retinue. Once again he kept that thing on his wrist.

After having accomplished his duties in Kesus, Damianos sent a message to inform his father that he would be a few days still. At the news Theomedes felt a slight disappointment he couldn’t place, that quickly turned into surprise at his own reaction as he realized that he’d begun to look forward to Damen’s warm presence at his side. He was glad Damianos was taking some time to himself to recover, at first, until he learned what he had been doing, and who with, in Egeria’s Summer Palace.

When his son returned Theomedes looked him up and down in the great hall, in front of the assembled court, and said, “I am glad your wound healed well.”

He hadn’t made a single remark about Damianos’s entanglements since he had been sixteen, a full decade ago, but there was rage welling up in his chest now. Damianos looked away, shuffling his feet like a boy, and he did not reply.

“Damen,” Theomedes said, softly. He took a breath. For the time being, he let it go.

Upon returning to Ios for good, Damianos insisted on refusing slaves when he set up his new household. He provided the entire court with shows of strength and ability in the training yard daily, all the while wearing that cuff. He reacquainted himself with old friends, was sociable and courteous as it was both expected of his position and his own nature, and gossip soon spread like wildfire that he wouldn’t take lovers. Theomedes, upon hearing that, wanted to shake Damen by the shoulders. It was pathetic that a prince should deny himself so, and for the sake of a boy that certainly was not extending him the same courtesy, away as he was in the dissolute court of Vere.

Damianos wrote long letters almost every week, when before it had been difficult enough to convince him to even dictate one. There were, unfortunately, answering letters from Vere, that Damen kept in his bedchamber. Theomedes learned of that soon enough, because they kept up their habit of taking dinner alone together in Damianos’s rooms when they were both in residence in Ios and not busy with other affairs or larger functions.

All through the autumn they kept making preparations for the transfer of Delpha, the second in seven years. Among the clauses Nikandros had negotiated was that Akielos would be allowed to keep a sizeable portion of land along the border with Patras, almost all the way from Sicyon to Vere. The climate was cooler than the western part of the region, but the land was good and rich with streams and forests, if covered in hills. It was a generous enough compromise, and it didn’t surprise Theomedes that Laurent had waited until he had been absent to suggest it.

Most days Damianos found himself sat at the table with Theomedes and his advisors, even when his presence wasn’t specifically requested. Theomedes appreciated it. He was taking up more of the dull, unpleasant duties he’d skirted in the past with the calm understanding of a Prince who had learned that some things need to be done.

And then, every once in a while, he said something absurd, like the time he told Nikandros that he should close the slave training gardens in Ios.

Nikandros looked pained at being put in such a position. Theomedes almost choked on his wine.

“You don’t have the authority to make these decisions, son, as you know very well.”

“I don’t,” Damen agreed. “Yet. But I will one day, and we all know how expensive slaves are to train.” He was holding his own wine goblet with perhaps too much strength; the wrist was shaking slightly. “Perhaps the kyros of Ios might not want to sink thousands of gold staters into the training of boys and girls that will be illegal to sell in fifteen years.”

“Fifteen years,” said Theomedes. “How old do you think I am?” But he did not forbid Nikandros from going along with Damianos’s suggestion, if he wished.

He could see that Nikandros was not immediately sure. Nikandros, who owed his position more to skills than birth, made abundant use of slaves; his station had been such that when he had first come into the palace as a personal friend of the Crown Prince, and then later as he advanced through the ranks of the military, he’d plainly relished the opportunity to avail himself of such a coveted mark of status. He had, however, stopped having slaves serve him around Damianos, unless it was a very public event, because it made him visibly uncomfortable. Theomedes, who with some luck would live more than fifteen years, but probably no more than twenty, and was quite set in his ways, refused to accommodate such whims.

He said, “If you plan to propose this foolishness to all of my kyroi, please do it when I am not around to witness it.”

He threw his head back as he drank so that he wouldn’t have to see the look in his son’s eyes. He wanted no part in this.

Later, when they were alone, Damen gave him one of those searching looks that were disconcerting in their novelty, and made him look older than his age.

“Thank you,” he said. “For not objecting.”

Theomedes was objecting. He had made his disapproval for his son’s newfound lunacy as plain as he could, without forbidding it outright, which he wouldn’t don because he was the King, and if he gave an order Damianos didn’t as he would still obey, and destroy this fragile connection they’d found with each other. Perhaps he would leave, even, sail for Vere and then Theomedes would have lost two sons. Or perhaps he would remain, and do his duty, and nothing more.

“Don’t take this as support.” It was important Damianos understood. One day, he might realize how senseless he was being, take back his folly before he did all of Akielos too much damage. Or he might not: Damianos would be King one day, too, a different king than his father, as Theomedes had been unlike his father before him, and so on as it was the way of the world.

“Still,” said Damen. “Thank you.”

Not long after it was time for Damianos’s twenty-sixth celebration, that came along with the olive harvest. There was a great feast, and a round of games, which he won neatly. There were revelries, and gifts from every noble in the kingdom hoping to curry favour and, surprisingly, from Torveld of Patras. Less surprisingly, there was a series of chests delivered to the palace that Theomedes could have pinned as being from Vere by the exaggerated decorations alone. The smallest seemed to contain nothing but powdery Veretian confections; Damen, who didn’t even like sweets, laughed to himself upon opening the lid, and had everyone around him try one. The taste was not bad.

Makedon, who did like sweets, had three. He took long swallows from his cup and congratulated Damianos on his taste in wine, Theomedes on having such a fine son, and Damianos again on his hunting prowess.

“Why, just last month,” began Makedon, and Damen winced.

“I don’t know if Father would care for hunting stories,” he said. “It was nothing special.”

Last month Damianos had gone to visit Sicyon, to report on the progress of the new kyros. The province would also receive new lands, the portion of Delpha that would remain with Akielos. With Nikandros moved permanently to Ios, Damianos was the one supervising the transition.

“Ravenel again?” asked Theomedes, as evenly as he could.

“Acquitart. It’s–” 

“I know where Acquitart is.” Even with the newly redesigned borders, Acquitart remained right on the outskirts between Vere and Akielos. That had probably been intentional.

“Perhaps I haven’t given you enough work to do in Sicyon if you could find time for all these hunts.”

That seemed to annoy Damen disproportionally, especially given how they both knew it hadn’t truly been his work ethics Theomedes had been criticizing. He stood up.

“Perhaps,” said Damianos. “Excuse me, Father, I should go make the rounds.”

The next week along with Damianos’s personal correspondence from Vere came an official missive. This one was written on heavy paper that had been blanched an expensive stark white and was embossed with the same starburst symbol stamped on the gold wax seal. The message, written in the elegant hand of a practised scribe, inquired about diplomatic relations.

As he read it, Theomedes remembered how Vere’s last ambassador had been complicit in his poisoning, and how no Akielon ambassador had been welcomed in Vere for the last decade. Unless the Prince had been under the impression Theomedes might send _Damianos_ to Arles; certainly even he must realize how preposterous that was.

Until he came to the second page. _On the topic of ambassadorships_ , it began, and went on to inform Theomedes that Lady Vannes, Vere’s ambassador to Vask, had arranged the safe passage of Lady Jokaste of Aegina through the border and to one of the minor courts of Ver-Vassel. She did indeed have a child with her. Further information would be communicated on request, upon the establishment of diplomatic channels.

Theomedes’s first instinct was to crumple the letter into a ball of refined paper and throw it in the fire. He folded it neatly, instead, and put it into a drawer where he could forget about it for a while still.

Fortunately, soon enough he found his mind occupied by other worries. Hypermenestra returned in the early winter, because after their lifetime together he couldn’t keep her away even if he’d wanted to – not that he could ever wish for such a thing. He’d missed her, deeply.

Some of his advisors expressed worry at her return. They had no say in their King’s affairs, but they were entitled to offer an opinion on matters of state, and Theomedes agreed that after – everything, it would be preferable that Hypermenestra keep to herself and take on a less public role than she had in the past, for the time being at least. This led her to spend more time in the private areas of the palace, and in turn led Theomedes to spend less time with Damianos than it had become their habit to do, because it would be cruel to force them both in each other’s company, with the spectre of Kastor and the weight of regret thick in the marble halls.

The next official letter from Vere was just as presumptuous as the last, if more easily dealt with. Prince Laurent meant to visit Marlas; as Delpha was still, until the new year, Akielon territory, he would need permission to cross the border and an escort once there.

The letter, penned in the same elegant hand that Theomedes began to suspect didn’t belong to a scribe at all, was far from a request for permission. His Highness, it read, was eager to escape the snows of Arles for the milder climate of Delfeur, and to inspect the proceedings in preparation for the transition. He also meant to redecorate the fort. Damianos laughed at that, and Theomedes made no objections when he began making preparations to leave. He thought of Hypermenestra, and of his own youth, and of Damen, doing his duty.

Damianos spent several weeks in Delpha that winter. Had Theomedes not known of the much baser reasons behind it, he might have been heartened by the amount of interest the Prince of Vere was putting in the matter of Delpha, consulting with Akielon administrators and spreading talk of harmony between nations as if he actually meant it. Still, when the day of the official handover actually came Damianos found himself in Ios; it was Nikandros, as the former kyros, who took upon himself the burden to perform whatever senseless ceremony there was to be done. Theomedes certainly wouldn’t.

It was new spring, the seventh since the war with Vere. Nikandros returned grim-faced without much ceremony one cold morning and walked straight from the stables into a morning meeting where Damianos was conspicuously assent.

In fact, Damianos was nowhere to be seen, from the white halls to the training courts, for the for the rest of that day and the one after. It was only in the evening, when Theomedes heard an offhanded comment from a passing soldier, that he remembered that today would mark the anniversary since the battle of Marlas when Damianos had won himself glory and his kingdom honour. It had been Damen’s greatest victory. In years past, it would have been celebrated unofficially, with toasts and war stories. Now he wouldn’t come out of his rooms; he kept them dark, as if in mourning.

When Theomedes made his way through the familiar wooden doors, he was once again the only one there. Damianos had sent everybody out, he’d been told, and hadn’t requested any food. As it happened far too often lately, Theomedes couldn’t begin to understand what might be going through his son's mind. As it had also been happening with increasingly more frequency, he found that he wanted to help.

“Would you like,” he said, then stopped, because what kind of comfort could he offer? He didn’t believe that his son should be saddened by memories of victory. Damianos, he suspected, would disagree.

“Should I have the candles lit,” he said, instead. “So that we could at least look each other in the face while,” _You sulk_ , he meant to say. “While we’re like this?”

“Father,” said Damianos, and the word fell flat. Perhaps he should provoke him into anger, but that seemed senselessly cruel. Perhaps he should have asked Nikandros to come in his stead; it was not the kind of request a King should make of a kyros, but he would have, for Damen’s sake.

“If you want,” Theomedes said, after a long deliberation. “I will listen.”

 _That_ garnered him an immediate reaction, if not the sort he’d been hoping for. Damianos laughed, and it wasn’t entirely pleasant – the dry laugh of a jaded man.

“You would hate it,” said Damianos. “Any of the things that are on my mind right now, you would hate all of it if you had to listen.”

Theomedes remembered Prince Laurent’s spiteful little speech. He would hate it tenfold if it came from Damen’s mouth, but on today of all days, he would listen.

“You know I wouldn’t make an offer I didn’t mean to keep. But, if you prefer,” he said. “I could talk to you, if you wanted. If there’s anything…”

The loaded silence that came after was friendlier, warm. Theomedes had come to appreciate this quiet companionship.

Then Damen said, “Could you tell me something about my mother? Not – Just something small.” He fumbled his words, anticipating Theomedes’s reaction. Damianos knew that his parents had not been particularly close, sharing the honours of marriage but not their lives, and he was always careful when he spoke of her. He hardly ever asked a thing. It was Theomedes’s greatest regret, after what had become of Kastor, that he didn’t know enough of his Queen and wife to share with the wondrous son they’d made together.

“Something small,” said Damen, again. “Something you did together once, something she did often, or…”

“In the evenings,” Theomedes said, surprising even himself with the memory. “Your mother liked to go on the high terrace, and look at the lights on the water.” It was such a small thing for him to remember all those years later, such a small thing for Damen to be glad for.

“She liked to count the ships,” he said. “Made a game of it with her ladies.”

“Because she was from Dice?”

Theomedes didn’t know. Dice was the only landlocked province in all of Akielos; Egeria wouldn’t have seen many ships growing up. Perhaps that had been the reason, or perhaps she had just found them beautiful to look at. He had never thought to ask.

To Damen, he said, “Yes.” And then, “Would you like to go on the high terrace now? I take it we won’t be having dinner.”

“To look at lights on the water?” His tone made it clear he found it a ridiculous proposition. It _was_ ridiculous. But it would get Damen out of these rooms, where he’d been confined to for so long, where he was now hiding among the shadows.

“Unless you have a better proposal,” he said, and Damen laughed, and they went out to look at the lights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumbling at [liesmyth](http://liesmyth.tumblr.com%22)


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